


what remains is all that remains

by awenswords



Series: Ruin and Beauty [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, F/F, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Blow Jobs, M/M, Major Character Injury, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sequel, Space Opera
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2019-11-01 13:14:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17867924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awenswords/pseuds/awenswords
Summary: ///When the Paladins first started this awful journey, this would have been the worst possible ending. Broken and crumbling and dead-eyed Paladins wandering the pale hallways of a ship that's not their own. Bare feet on metal floor, relishing in the chill because it's a reminder that they're alive.///Ruin and Beauty Part 2With Earth destroyed, the humans need a new home - but the Paladins barely survived the fight with the Galra.





	1. It's so quiet now

Life on the Atlas becomes something close to normal. The Garrison-clean metal walls are nothing like Altean decadence, and military uniforms can never replace the casual relaxation of the Castle of Lions, but it's safe. Shiro learns that he missed a lot during his time in the wasteland - and the battle that raged in the sky was tooth-and-nail, desperate, dirty fighting. It was on the ground, too, far off in the evacuated New York City.

Sometimes Shiro hears Lance crying at night on the bridge because he wasn't just fighting robots, he was _killing_. He thinks he's a murder now, poor child clinging to the last shreds of his own humanity. In the quiet moments between words, he stares at the bruises that speckle his knuckles. Turns his hand, inspecting the palms of an executioner. There's other blood there too, caught beneath his skin. He found Keith half-conscious in the Black Lion after the first day of fighting, blood blood _blood_ everywhere. Staining Lance's hands when he shook Keith's limp form.

Lance laughs less, spends more time silently leaning into Keith's circle of gravity. There's something there that Shiro is still untangling, some change in their energies. It's different, now, the way they interact. They sit shoulder-to-shoulder, sip from the same glass, and their arguments are less bitter-angry. Still fiery red and burning, but _different_.

The loss of Earth changed everyone.

Pidge rolls the halls in a wheelchair, hunched over metal scraps and wire and stays up all night trying desperately to replace the leg and foot she lost in an awful explosion. She's quiet in the mornings now, whimpering over breakfast as phantom pains rip through limbs that aren't there anymore. Shiro has the same agony, has had for a long time now. Where everyone else tiptoes around her, Shiro finds himself in her quarters at midnight playing Atari games (he realized a week into their late-night gaming sessions that they play Atari because the joystick only requires one hand, and he'll never stop overflowing with _love_ and _gratitude_ for Pidge's quiet understanding), because any ounce of normalcy is _beautiful._ They don't talk, just sit side-by-side, playing Space Invaders and pretending they haven't lived through it. She cries sometimes, pixels reflecting on her too-big glasses, silent tears she refuses to acknowledge.

Shiro doesn't know how to help anyone.

When the Paladins first started this awful journey, this would have been the worst possible ending. Broken and crumbling and dead-eyed Paladins wandering the pale hallways of a ship that's not their own. Bare feet on metal floor, relishing in the chill because it's a reminder that they're _alive._ But it's not the worst possible ending, because that's what matters (what they have to tell themselves that matters) - they're alive. Alive. To breathe stale filtered air calibrated to mimic the composition of Earth's atmosphere. It leaves a metallic aftertaste, like nickles in Shiro's mouth. Every alarm-clock morning a bitter reminder that the day-night cycles can never come close to a sunrise on Earth.

Shiro gracefully accepts the Captain's quarters but he's afraid he doesn't _lead_ much. It's a formality, because he spends most of his time in a hospital bed.

Fingers clenching around Adam's hand, he spends _hours_ on the operating table. It's strange, he never really thought about the fact that he can't _feel_ his brain. No nerve endings, no pain besides the prickling in his scalp. When the Galra operated on him, everything hurt - no numbing to his skull, nothing to separate the pain in the reset of his body from the dullness of his cerebral cortex.

Removing neural implants is an extensive surgery. There are scars riddled across his skull now, parting white hair to reveal a mess of raised tissue, swollen red skin and black stitches speckled with yellow bruises. It's gone from his motor cortex, but there's still more to remove. Brain surgery never comes without a cost, but the cost of leaving the wires in is worse. He needs every inch of _Galra_ scraped out of his body, he needs to reclaim the networks in his mind.

Some nights, when he can't sleep, he sneaks out to the navigation room and watches images of stars as they drift by. It's calming, knowing that there are other planets out there. Because, see, the Galra didn't just destroy Earth. They wrecked Mars and Venus and tore apart the solar system, leaving planetary rubble in their wake. Hunk joins him on occasion, bringing hot chocolate or tea or cookies. Small Earthen comforts. He talks with only a slight quiver in his voice, just strong enough that they can both imagine nothing's changed.

Readouts on the screen display information about passing stars. Shiro watches and thinks about how he'll never be able to clean the wasteland desert sand out from under his fingernails. When he showers, his finds small, perfectly round grains in his scalp. At night, he expects to wake up on the floor of that rusting old church.

Two weeks ago, they broke out of the solar system. Humanity collectively chose that, for the time being, sticking together was best. Shiro knows Allura and Iverson are working on organizing the last people of Earth. He's sat through a few meetings with other leaders - a tall, slim man with a deep Nigerian accent, a sharp-chinned Russian woman, an older man from France who chokes on his r's and can't quite pronounce Shiro's name. There are others too, a proud woman from what was once India, ambassadors from China and Switzerland and Morocco.

Shiro can't stand the meetings.

Allura is the backbone of the Paladins. She understands their grief, comforts the humans and motivates them. Shiro never recognized her strength enough, he never understood how much awful black-hole sadness she was pushing through but he _gets_ it now.

"How do you do it?" He asked her once, small-voiced, staring at his hand because if he met Allura's eyes he thought their grief might combine and swallow them both whole.

She was silent for a moment, thoughtful, pushed white hair behind her ears then said, "I don't."

"What do you mean?" Shiro swallowed and chewed on his cheek, "How did you keep going?" He wiped the back of his hand across his eyes, smearing the tears that were already gathering.

"There's no secret, no way to shoulder through. Just . . . you have people left, Shiro. Remember that," Allura had said, voice dropping to a whisper.

And she was right. Shiro hasn't figured out how to stop thinking about what Earth looked like while it crumbled. The afterimage echoes behind his eyes, overlays reality and drags his heart down into the floor - as if artificial gravity increased tenfold and crushed his bones.

None of the humans know how to process it.

Proxima Centauri drifts past the window and Shiro is the only one awake to see it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ruin and Beauty
> 
> It’s so quiet now the children have decided to stop  
> being born. We raise our cups in an empty room.  
> In this light, the curtains are transparent as gauze.  
> Through the open window we hear nothing--  
> no airplane, lawn mower, no siren  
> speeding its white pain through the city’s traffic.  
> There is no traffic. What remains is all that remains.
> 
> -Patricia Young
> 
> ///
> 
> I'm back! So every chapter title will come from that poem. Expect another chapter in a week! I hope you guys liked this one.


	2. Darling, the wars have been forgotten

Shiro sits alone on the living room floor, knees drawn up to his chest. Even with his toes sinking into plush carpet, he shivers. Maybe it's the view out the window, where star clusters stretch out in the abyss, nebulae flow in the background like twisting fabric. They're nearing the Epsilon Indi star system.

Their solar system is almost 12 light-years away.

He's learning to love the view, though. Remembering what it was like to feel one with the world, the universe, is a process. Belonging. A feeling he hasn't felt in a while, not since before he died, or maybe before then, even. When was the last time he let himself feel at home somewhere?

Sometimes he still expects to wake up on the floor of a prison cell, all bruised and bloody. Nights like those he stumbles out to the living room, shivers in the cold, and watches as space swirls by.

He hasn't felt this alone in a long time, even with Adam asleep just on the other side of the wall.

Shiro feels off-balance without the heavy, bulky prosthetic. He’s lighter now, doesn’t lean to the left so much to overcompensate for the weight that clutched to his right arm and crawled up his shoulder. Adjusting is easier than he expected, despite the cold early-morning aches and pains that run through his spine. Looking at himself in the mirror is harder. Face mottled with half-healed yellow bruises, angry raised scars along his scalp, the black fabric of a stump shrinker wrapped around what remains of his right arm. At least his vision doesn’t swim anymore, and his ears only ring when it’s perfectly quiet.

He isn’t in a war anymore because he lost the war. Sure, the Galra don’t allow survivors, but the attacks are infrequent now that they’re in Voltron Coalition sectors. Not like the Coalition means anything anymore. It doesn’t _feel_ like war, and something about that troubles Shiro. He doesn’t have a fight anymore, no end goal besides basic survival, the day-to-day search for food, water, something meaningful in empty hallways.

It’s different from a battle. Harder to survive when there’s nothing physical to fight, no soda-can robot to crumple in his fist.

Shiro hears padding feet from behind him and is instantly on his feet, staggering and reaching for the arm of the sofa to right his balance. He's stepping forwards and drawing back his fist, fighting back the helpless feeling that's rising in his chest, when Adam's voice whispers from the artificial darkness, "Takashi, hey."

At the sound of Adam's voice he relaxes, stumbles forwards to press his forehead against his husband's shoulder, "Fuck, Adam. You startled me."

"We're not in the wasteland anymore, sweetheart."

Desert sand and hot metal and wires snapping, blood, vomit, blood and more blood. When Shiro showers, all he can see is red blood swirling down the drain in that church basement. Shiro aches for the perfect time before that, and before now, when there weren't as many hard edges to his body or to this place. When the thought on his mind each morning was _Adam looks beautiful in the sunlight,_ not _maybe this time, Earth will be there._

But that's not the worst thing, not by a long shot. The worst part is that he's still too afraid to tell Adam what happened between leaving Earth and stumbling into Adam's arms in that abandoned apartment.

When Adam's eyes flicker up to meet Shiro's gaze a surge of protectiveness floods through him, because this is _Adam,_ alive and beautiful bare-footed in the living room. Even if it's small and cramped and on a fucking spaceship, Shiro relaxes a little bit into that beautiful feeling and lets himself forget about the blood and dirt that he still thinks might stain his fingernails.

"Are you okay?" Adam asks.

Shiro nods, swallowing, breathing in the hot feeling of Adam pressed so close to him, "I'm - I'm alright. I just - all of this. _You."_

"Me?" There's a question in Adam's eyes, in the furrow of his brows and the way he steps back to push his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. Shiro follows him forwards, reaches his hands up to cup Adam's cheek and presses a chaste kiss against his lips.

"Yes, you."

Adam moves to perch on the arm of the low sofa, threads his fingers through Shiro's and brushes his lips along his knuckles, "What were you thinking about, sweetheart?"

Something must have changed in Shiro's expression because a scared, worried look rises in Adam's eyes and Shiro swallows, looking away out the floor-to-ceiling window. It's a laughing reminder that they're not on Earth.

"Talk to me," Adam murmurs.

"Our days in the desert aren't what scares me." It's oddly soothing, admitting that he's afraid. Here, in this cramped spaceship apartment, he can remind himself that he's not just a captain or a leader or a Paladin. Adam reminds him that he's allowed to be a human. "The desert doesn't make the cut for the most terrifying moments of my life."

"What does?"

Shiro takes a deep breath, holds it in his lungs and exhales slow and heavy like his therapist tells him to (because, after all of the _shit_ he's seen, Commander Iverson wouldn't let him return to active duty unless he got help, and he'll never stop thanking Iverson because he thinks it might have saved his life). He has to close his eyes, to block out how fucking heartbroken Adam looks, before he can speak: "The worst thing was when I woke up without an arm. Not - not in the church. In the Galra prison."

Waking up with nothing below his elbow, sitting on the floor of his cell with a bloody stump and hollow eyes. Matt tried to talk to him across the hall, through the bars of his cell (a cage, really). He remembers Matt's tears, he remembers his shaky voice and the pain in his eyes when Shiro curled up in the corner and sobbed.

"Then having to live with a terrible metal thing," he continues, "Coming back to Earth and being told you died is definitely up there. Watching Earth die. Coming out."

When Shiro opens his eyes, there are tears glistening on Adam's cheeks.

"Deep breaths, sweetheart. Can you tell me about the good things?" Adam says. Shiro recognizes the question, he's been catching Adam reading pamphlets and books on PTSD when he doesn't think Shiro is home. Shiro can see in Adam's eyes that he's swallowing down his curiosity. He wants to know everything that's happened but Shiro _can't_ talk about it. Not now. Not yet.

Shiro takes a shuddering breath, tries to fight off the hot, awful feeling that's growing in his forehead, "Our - um, our wedding. Flying the Black Lion," his breath hitches, "Finding out you were alive. I missed you so fucking much, Adam."

He can't find the words to express it, how much he loves this man who stays up at night reading books on how to help him, who kisses his scars and says he loves all of the parts of him Shiro hates. So he does the only thing he can think of doing - leans forwards and frees his hand from Adam's grasp, tips his husband's chin up and presses their lips together. Soft, chaste, mingled with salty tears but there's no taste of blood or metal or gritty sand. He slides between Adam's knees, tries to say with his lips the words he can't say with his voice.

Adam draws back, lips red and shiny, and whispers into Shiro's neck, "I missed you, I missed you, I missed you," teeth scraping on his collarbone. Shiro draws in a shuddering breath, blindly grabbing at Adam's hips, letting his fingers wander up under his shirt - skin, skin, skin. Adam is cold and wiry, lean muscle, a survivor's body.

"Are you - "

"Don't ask me if I'm okay. Just - " Shiro says and waves a hand vaguely around the living room. Adam looks confused and worried until Shiro continues, "let me - " His hand makes its way up the back of Adam's neck, tugging at his hair to tip Adam's head back.

Burn scars lace along the palm of Adam's hand, and with the loss of his ring finger he wears his new wedding ring on his right hand. It's a simple circlet of spare wire from the engineering storeroom, and it's cold against Shiro's skin when Adam cups his jaw to pull their lips together, all teeth and tongue and a hazy, wanting feeling that burns in Shiro's chest. His breath hitches and he and presses down against Adam, biting at his bottom lip and licking into his mouth.

"Miss me?" Adam whispers, breath ragged and wrecked as he pulls Shiro forwards, one knee pressing between his thighs.

Shiro tries to say something, tries to respond but he can't get his voice to cooperate beyond a ragged gasp when Adam sucks at that spot right at the corner of his jaw, below his ear, and it's sure to leave a vivid bruise but _that_ thought goes straight to his groin, electricity and heat and Adam's mouth, twisting into a grin against his skin.

"I love you. I want to _show_ you that."

"You don't need to."

"I want to," he says, crumpling Adam's shirt in his fist before reaching to pull at the waistband of his sweatpants, sinks to his knees and gasps when Adam's fingers trail through his hair. He can feel the plush threads of the carpet and thinks that this is one of the bonuses of the captain's quarters, no bruises on his knees like the tile floor in their first apartment. Maybe some good things can come out of all of this.

There are good things, of course, and even with all of the awful there isn't a lot he would change about his life. Earth might be gone but he does have Adam's thighs on either side of his head and Adam's fingers pulling at his hair.

He's allowed to be human tonight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title comes from Ruin and Beauty by Patricia Young.  
> This was going to be more smutty and a little explicit but I decided to cut that due to the demographic of this fandom being mostly minors. Sorry!
> 
> Say hi to me on [tumblr!](https://awenswords.tumblr.com/)


	3. In this light, the curtains are transparent as gauze.

Shiro wakes up a second before the timed overhead lights turn on with Adam's leg thrown over his hip and his forehead buried in the back of Shiro's neck. Soft breaths tickle the space between his shoulder blades. Adam mumbles something soft and wanders his hands up Shiro's chest.

Lazy mornings. He's missed those. Waking up and feeling safe is almost a foreign idea now, but if he closes his eyes against the florescent light and ignores the humming of the Atlas, he can pretend that the mattress is a little softer and there's sunlight streaming through half-open curtains. It's been years since the last time he fell into bed with his husband. He feels like he should pinch himself, shake his head free from cobweb dreams. Wake up stranded in the desert or asleep in the Black Lion.

But Adam's chest rises and falls against his back with each breath. He is real and warm and solid, not a flimsy mirage across the hallway of a purple-lit prison.

"We have meetings," Shiro murmurs, throat dry and jaw sore, voice early-morning hoarse.

Adam huffs and presses his fingers down against Shiro's clavicle before rolling onto his back and spreading his arms out, hitting Shiro in the face in the process, "You have meetings, Takashi."

"Breakfast. Come on," Shiro says, rolling out of bed and dragging the sheet with him. It's sticky and messy so he crumples it into a ball and throws it into the laundry hamper. Adam groans at the sudden loss of heat and sits up, dragging the back of his hand over his eyes and yawning.

"If I have to eat one more bowl of canned pinto beans, I'm going to die."

"I'll make coffee?" he suggests, joints popping as he stands. He surveys their bedroom, lamp knocked over and someone's shirt snagged on the corner of a shelf. That's a mess to clean up later, he decides, and fishes through the closet for his clothes.

Most of the clothing is unfitting, uniforms borrowed from other officers and street-clothes bought from civilians in ship's second-floor gymnasium that's been turned into a makeshift market of sorts, a stuffy room of gritty bodies where people circle messy booths and ask if anyone has seen their son or daughter or mother. Trade a provision stamp for a t-shirt, trinkets for a battered book.

Adam stands, helps him pull on his uniform. He buttons up the collar with red-knuckled, callused hands. Even though his missing fingers are scarred over and the burns on his palms and wrists have faded to a light silver, he still winces when the fabric brushes against the stumps where fingers used to be. He presses a kiss against Shiro's jaw and adjusts his uniform to cover last night's purple bruises with a wry grin. Shiro smiles at the secret patterns hidden under their clothes, the friction burns on his knees and the memory of Adam's fingers tracing down his spine.

"What meetings d'you have?" Adam asks, shoving the door open and meandering over to the kitchen. Opening cans is something Shiro hasn't quite figured out how to do with one hand so Adam takes care of that, scrunching his nose against the smell of canned beans and spinach. Shiro prepares the instant coffee - not as nice as the stuff Adam used to get back on Earth, fancy Dutch Chocolate and French Roast, but still. Coffee.

Shiro shrugs off-balancedly, holding the container between his hip and the counter to unscrew it with one hand, "I'm just going where they tell me to go, at this point."

When Adam turns to look at him, there's a soft expression on his face, some mix of sadness and pity. He spares himself a moment to imagine a day without obligations, with out the grueling wheel of humanity on their backs. Retirement. He thinks it would be nice, probably, although he's not sure what he would even do without a world to save.

After breakfast, Shiro makes his way to the command room.

He's watching the energy use readouts when Colleen Holt slides up next to him, tablet in hand, all blonde hair and ballerina flats and momish smiles in that crisp military uniform. He expects her to say something kind, or supportive, or to point out that he's limping a little bit more today because he and Iverson decided to lower the temperature of the command room. Instead, she says something unexpected and awful - "We're going to run out."

"What?" he frowns, swiping through graphs that are starting to blur together.

"Food," Colleen says, pushing her tablet in-front of him, "we're going to run out."

"I thought - what - I thought Iverson had plans?"

"The human race can't survive off of saltine crackers and canned beans anymore. We need - a greenhouse, something like that."

Shiro sighs and collapses into the captain's chair. He hates the formality of it, the feeling of overlooking and being above everyone else. Before this, in the Black Lion, he was a front-line sort of leader, shouting orders from the battlefield. It's harder to be involved like that when today's battle is how to build a greenhouse on a fucking battleship that houses half of California. Then there's the rest of the population of Earth, little red dots on the nav board. When exhaustion makes his eyes blur, they look like a school of fish, a flock of birds. Swirling around as one. Maybe tragedy was all it took to unite humans.

"What do we need, then, for a greenhouse?"

Colleen flips though pages on her tablet, "I've talked to the other horticulturists, and we think hydroponics is best. We need to find seeds, to start, because there's no fresh produce left. There's - well, there's a lot of supplies. But it's doable. I think. We'll need to make stops for supplies."

Shiro grimaces and leans over the navigation board, filtering to show only the habitable exoplanets with civilized creatures. They're far enough away from Earth that they won't find any genetic relatives, and the langues are so far from Earthen that they're likely to run into trouble.

The closest inhabited planet that's, at least in their directory, peaceful, is a month away.

"How long do we have until the food starts to really run out?" Shiro asks, already running through fuel calculations.

"If we don't ration now? About a month."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! This chapter is not my best work but I promise the plot will be picking up in the next one!


	4. Drenched in morning glory

By the time Shiro steps off the shuttle, feet sinking into thick moss, it's been a month since his last full meal. It was the pinto beans and spinach, with Adam. There's a sluggish cloud hanging over his head, hunger pulling in the back of his stomach and sending his steps staggering a little to the left when he starts to slip on the damp floor Argon. He takes a deep breath and tastes humidity, heavy and wet on his face. Pidge said there's not _quite_ as much oxygen here as on Earth, and he can feel it as his body filters out water and leaves him feeling like he's sucking oxygen out of a swimming pool, damp as the air is.

The plant is beautiful, though, he thinks as he takes in his surroundings in a slow circle, tuning out Pidge's technical readings. Tall, lush ferns grow like small trees, the ends of their fronds brushing the top of Shiro's head as he walks. Lance trails his fingers along the low-hanging hair-like tendrils that drape over the bracken, light green and ethereal, blossoming with little yellow flowers. A thick fog hangs in the air, clinging to Shiro's skin, soaking through the places between his armor. Little creatures skitter through the moss, long snake-like things weaving underfoot and bright birds soaring overhead. They cast distorted shadows, filtered through ferns and air plants.

Hunk stoops to examine a bright blue, iridescent beetle, marveling as it twists towards him with fractal yellow eyes. It makes a clicking noise as it crawls onto his outstretched hand, fitting delicately into his palm. He hums to it as they walk, gently stroking it's wings and grinning as it preens.

"I'm naming you Tyler," he says, holding the creature up to the sunlight.

The planet feels untouched, no scores of Galra footprints or CO2 clogging the air. Even though Shiro is struggling to get a full breath in the humidity - they elected to not bring oxygen systems because, the air is survivable, and the people on the ships need it - he can appreciate the planet's beauty. He doesn't want to let humans anywhere near it.

Pidge grumbles as the foot of her prosthetic leg is muddied by the damp ground, and she slips for a moment before steadying herself on Shiro’s arm. She frowns and adjusts something on her tablet, holding her hand up and muttering, "Just - give me a sec. Gotta recalibrate."

"Pidge," Shiro starts delicately, "Is now the best time to be testing your newest prototype?"

"The last one didn't _pivot_ right!" She slams a fist against the metal of her thigh, popping her kneecap open to fiddle with a wire.

Delving into the technology is how Pidge has coped with losing limbs, and although Shiro doesn't understand it - he respects it. Experimentation and wire-shocks send Shiro shaking, but Pidge would open up her own skull and stick electrodes in her motor cortex if she could. Actually - no, she had to be _stopped_ from doing that.

She's trying to convince the surgeons to let her orchestrate her own electrode-implantation surgery so she can start working on a brain-machine interface, but they don't have the resources for neurosurgery. And, of course, Pidge _isn't a neurosurgeon._ She steps back from herself and takes a clinical view, treating her leg like it's a tricky C++ script.

Shiro gets dragged into the swirling black-hole that is his body.

The two of them take to amputation differently.

All five of them are bone-weary and hungry. Lance leans against Keith and whispers something about _eating the moss,_ and Shiro shares a private smile with Keith at the blush that rises on his cheeks when Lance loops an arm around his shoulders, pulling him close and laughing. Keith ducks his head, pushing long hair back from his eyes and shoves Lance away with all the charm of a long-legged foal, teetering to the side awkwardly. The blue paladin is quick to hide the burst of hurt that flares across his face, and Shiro makes a mental note to give Keith a talk about how to flirt like he doesn’t hate Lance’s guts.

Keith stumbles towards Shiro, ducking behind him to hide the childish smile that is warming his face. Shiro shakes his head, bemused at his antics.

"You know," he says in a low voice, "you could just - "

"I'm not talking to you about this," Keith mutters resolutely, crossing his arms.

With a glance over his shoulder, Shiro rolls his eyes, "Keith. Really. Even for you, this is - "

"Excuse me? Even for - even for me? What's that supposed to mean?"

"Alan the Tour Guide," Shiro starts, "Miguel the Senior Cadet."

Keith flushes, nearly tripping over a tree root, "You knew about Alan?"

"No-one likes Tahoe that much, Keith."

Keith is quiet, yes, and private to all but Shiro and Adam, but not shameful. Shiro knew he was _definitely_ gay after the whole _thing_ with Alan the Tour Guide at the Tahoe trip, what with Keith’s stammering and the sheer amount of boat tours he went on despite being mildly seasick.

"The water was nice," he says defensively.

"You only thought the water was nice when _Alan_ was sailing on the lake."

Keith huffs and retaliates, “You and Adam aren’t much better.”

Shiro rolls his eyes, watching as Keith steals furtive glances at Lance's shining face in sunlight streaming through fern fronds and dappling his copper skin. He's bent over the beetle in Hunk's hands now, watching it reflect the light with a wild grin on his face. Lance is lighter outside the spaceship, he melts right in to new planet and bounces a little as he walks, enjoying the slightly below-Earthean gravity.

In an instant - as if he can _sense_ the upcoming opportunity to mock Shiro - Lance shifts his steps, careening towards the red-and-white pair, “Shiro and Adam, you say? Spill the beans.”

“They were - they were _terrible,”_ Keith says, flushing at Lance’s sudden attention but clearly relishing it, “I mean, sickening. They called each other _sweetheart._ In front of other people! In front of me!” Keith’s voice gets higher pitched with each word.

Lance grins, shooting Shiro a sly look, “Adam is hot so, like, he could call _me_ whatever - “

“Please, no. That’s my husband, Lance.”

“You’re hot too, Shiro,” He wiggles his eyebrows and Shiro flushes red as Lance says, “So. Tell me all the naughty details.”

“That’s - no. Lance, no,” he stammers as the paladin narrows his eyes, leaning forwards, inspecting something on -

“Shiro has a _hickey!_ Space daddy got laid! Fistbump,” He raises his hand, fingers curled in a fist, and Shiro bats it away, trying desperately to hold on to some shred of leadership and dignity. Allura is stifling a giggle behind her palm and Keith looks like he wants to melt back into the fern-frond forest.

For a moment, Shiro thinks that _maybe_ they’re done but Hunk joins in, “Ohohoh Lance what’s going on?”

“Shiro lost his virginity and we’re all very proud of him,” Lance deadpans.

Pidge snickers, and Shiro wants to cover her ears because she’s _young._ Sometimes he gets afraid for her - really afraid, a clawing fear that twists his throat because, really, all the rest of them, they’re children. The burden of saving humanity (or, at least, preserving it) should not be crushing the shoulders of children. And here they are, the children who have to save the humans - Pidge only just old enough to have a driver’s license, Lance and Keith and Hunk should be applying to college right now. And Shiro should be in grad school, hunched over in a lab with a tech breathing down his neck something about proper equipment-cleaning procedures.

It just hits him sometimes, how young they all are.

But at least they can still laugh, even if they’re laughing at him. He’s happy, really, to be the focus of their jeers if they’re smiling, if they’re not thinking about how hungry they are and how fucked-up all this shit has made them.

So when Pidge says, in a distinctly mocking and momish voice, “Oh, my god, Shiro, did you use protection?” he laughs, internally cursing the blush that rises on his cheeks, and adjusts the collar of his armor to hide the purple mark on his neck. Hunk howls with laughter, startling the beetle and it flutters over to land on Allura’s shoulder.

After a moment of soft laughter, they all fall silent, the quiet broken with soft mourners between the Paladins. Shiro catches snippets of conversations -

“ - headed North-East, right, because - “

“ - worried about him, after whatever happened in the desert.”

“ - the whole Tahoe thing, anyways, Keith?” Lance jeers, elbowing Keith in the ribs.  
“Oh, my god, nothing. _Nothing."_

Shiro looks up, through the bright green fern fronds, and the sky is rolling with clouds. Humidity sticks to his face, and he wipes sweat from his brow. The air is sticky, dampening his hair, and the lack of oxygen in the humid air is fogging up his mind. He takes deep breaths as he walks.

“ - definitely not win in a fight, Hunk, Wonder Woman would beat his ass," Pide says with a scoff, and Hunk groans.

“ - think Shiro is still stuck back on - “

“ - fucking piece of shit leg!”  
"Watch your motherfucking language you little gremlin bastard.”

“ - help him, somehow, but I’m not sure how.”

In an instant, the sky crackles, opening up in a great cacophony of sound - rolling thunder rattles Shiro to his bones and lighting slices the world in two. The sky bleeds, fat drops of rain cascading down like red blood dripping from a wound. Water splatters his face, thick and heavy and not-quite-Earth, the way it clings to his skin and rolls off his eyelids with honey slowness. It’s elating, brings life back to his bones - standing in an unfamiliar forest, he feels alone and ecstatic. He wants to throw his head back and laugh, wants to stomp in puddles like a grass-stained five year old. The air is almost windless, the tall fernsstill but for the drops of rain that glide off their leaves and gather in pools at Shiro’s feet. With the thick humidity, the rain is warm, summery, the thunder clouds rolling above don’t seem as terrifying as they might anywhere else, and Shiro grins as he lifts his face to the sky, welcoming the rush of rain and unfiltered hot. Lance whoops, hair dark with wet and plastered to his face. Even Keith sports a small grin, blushing as Lance throws an arm around his shoulders as he turns his face to the clouds, blinking at the droplets that land on his eyelashes. Keith watches with wonderment, and Shiro catches his awe-struck gaze gravitating towards Lance's beaming smile, not the glimmering rain.

Allura spins in a slow circle, arms outstretched, "I've never seen rain like this," she says with a small smile and wonder in her eyes, "it never rained on Altea."

A laugh works its way up Shiro's throat and bubbles out his mouth, a glittering, fizzy giggle, like soda cans shaken up in the back of a car. Keith turns his head, eyes wide, and Shiro wonders if perhaps he hasn't laughed like this in a long time. He wishes Adam was here to watch the rainbows that gather in the sky but, really, this is about the _Paladins,_ today, and how they're all bursting into peals of laughter, doubled over at the sheer joy of _actually being alive._ After all this, they're alive, and the humans are alive, and Shiro decides that maybe he can will a little bit of hope to sprout up in his chest. He'll incubate it, and maybe under the right pressure and temperatures it'll become something real. Something close to happiness.

But today is a day for stumbling through a rainy forest, feet splashing in muddy puddles, face flushed from the velocity of his grin. All of a sudden it feels like an old adventure, when every planet he set foot on was a new, beautiful experience, and that wanderlust grips him again for the first time in ages.

He sets his feet on the path to the town, the path to stitching himself up again like a doll with the stuffing pulled out, smiling and bumping against the other Paladins that follow him through the fern frond forest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no proofreading, we die like men  
> i'm back and with a - plot twist! - happyish chapter! The other day, it suddenly started raining while I was swimming in the lake and I had to sprint up a hill to my cottage & it was so exhilarating that the moment I sat down I started to write, and hence, the last bit of this chapter! The rest of it I wrote between exams and traveling. Sorry for the late update!


End file.
